Sunday, January 25, 2015

No one who grew up watching N.Y.C.-era television will ever forget talk-show host Joe Franklin, who passed away yesterday at age 88. His show - which ran on WOR Channel 9 for 43 (!) years - is almost impossible to describe to anyone who hasn't actually seen it.

Where to start? The old-time showbiz patter? The cluttered, crowded set? Celebrities at the beginning - or often end - of their careers? Joe's on-camera commercials for Hoffman Beverages, Streit's Matzos and Martin Paints ("It ain't just paint")? The way the single static camera focused on a singer's face while one of their records played over the studio sound system, leaving them to squirm uncomfortably under its pitiless eye?
A showbiz legend, Franklin wrote jokes for Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson when he was just a teenager, and worked on Kate Smith's radio program. His show aired twice a day on WOR, and I seldom missed it.

Thursday, December 04, 2014

I first encountered this 1941 poem by Robinson Jeffers in Hunter S. Thompson's FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL'72. It's stuck with me ever since, and is truer now than ever (click image below to enlarge).

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

You have to subscribe to read the rest, but here's the first page of my feature in the latest Noir City e-magazine about Michael Mann's THIEF, as past of their "Prime Cuts: My Favorite Neo-Noir" series. It's a great (and heist-centric) issue, with contributions from Michael Connelly, Christa Faust and many others. And your subscription money goes to an excellent cause - the nonprofit Film Noir Foundation's efforts to rescue and restore classic noir films.

Crissa Stone, the cool-headed professional criminal last seen in Wallace Stroby's acclaimed SHOOT THE WOMAN FIRST is back in THE DEVIL'S SHARE. This time she's acting as a thief-for-hire, partnering with a wealthy art collector to steal a truckload of plundered Iraqi artifacts before they're repatriated to their native country. But what's supposed to be a "give-up" robbery with few complications quickly turns deadly, and soon Crissa is on the run, with both a murderous ex-military hit squad, and her own partners-in-crime in pursuit.

Friday, September 05, 2014

Paid a last visit Wednesday night to the mostly-gutted and soon-to-be-vacated Star-Ledger office in Newark, where the paper's been since 1966 and where I worked for 13 years (1995-2008). The organization's been divided and dismantled, the staff decimated by layoffs, buyouts and attrition, and those remaining have been split up into smaller leased satellite offices in other cities. The building itself was sold to a developer and likely to be razed. Contrary to Thomas Wolfe, sometimes you have to go home again, if only to see that it's not there for you anymore.

(Above, stacked and discarded mailbox trays of former staffers.)
****UPDATE And a final photo, taken by Helen Twelvetrees the week of Sept. 22.